the horse the vigorousness of his own spirit, they would be as rebellious against their rulers as unreasonable men against government: nay, the angels themselves, because their light reflected home to their orbs, and they understood all the secrets of their own perfection, they grew vertiginous, and fell from the battlements of heaven. But the excellency of the human soul shall then be truly understood, when the reflection will make no distraction of our faculties, nor enkindle any irregular fires; when we may understand ourselves without danger.

Sermon, The Foolish Exchange, ii.

THE WICKED MAN

A WICKED man does know that good is lovely, and sin is of an evil and destructive nature; and when he is reproved, he is convinced; and when he is observed, he is ashamed; and when he has done, he is unsatisfied, and when he pursues his sin, he does it in the dark: tell him he shall die, and he sighs deeply, but he knows it as well as you; proceed, and say that after death comes Judgement, and the poor man believes and trembles; he knows that God is angry with him; and if you tell him that for aught he knows, he may be in Hell to-morrow, he knows that it is an intolerable truth, but it is also undeniable. And yet, after this, he runs to commit his sin with as certain an event and resolution as if he knew no argument against it; these notices of things terrible and true pass through his understanding as an eagle through the air; as long as her flight lasted the air was shaken, but there remains no path behind her.

A Sermon Preached to the University of Dublin.

DEFENCELESSNESS

THERE is in nature nothing so contemptible, but it may meet with us in such circumstances, that it may be too hard for us in our weaknesses; and the sting of a bee is a weapon sharp enough to pierce the finger of a child or the lip of a man; and those creatures which nature hath left without weapons, yet they are armed sufficiently to vex those parts of men which are left defenceless and obnoxious to a sunbeam, to the roughness of a sour grape, to the unevenness of a gravel-stone, to the dust of a wheel, or the unwholesome breath of a star looking awry upon a sinner.

Funeral Sermon, for the Countess of Carbery.

A PRAYER

A PRAYER FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, TO BE SAID BY VIRGINS AND WIDOWS, PROFESSED OR RESOLVED

SO TO LIVE; AND MAY BE USED BY ANY OTHER

O HOLY and purest Jesus, who wert pleased to espouse every holy soul, and join it to Thee with a holy union and mysterious instruments of religious society and communications; O fill my soul with religion and desires holy as the thoughts of Cherubim, passionate beyond the love of women, that I may love Thee as much as ever any creature loved Thee, even with all my soul and all my faculties, and all the degrees of every faculty. Let me know no loves but those of duty and charity, obedience and devotion, that I may for ever run after Thee, who art the King of Virgins, and with whom whole kingdoms are in love, and for whose sake queens have died, and at whose feet kings with joy have laid their crowns and sceptres. Holy Living, II, vi.

THE ROSE

BUT so have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness and decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head and broke its stalk, and at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces.

THE SUN

Holy Dying, I, ii.

BUT as when the Sun approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like those which decked the brows of Moses when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still while a man tells the story the Sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full light; and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly: so is a man's reason and his life.

SICKNESS

Ibid., I, iii.

THE Soul by the help of sickness knocks off the fetters of pride and vainer complacencies. Then she draws the

curtains and stops the light from coming in, and takes the pictures down, those fantastic images of self-love, and gay remembrances of vain opinion and popular noises. Then the spirit stoops into the sobrieties of humble thoughts, and feels corruption chiding the forwardness of fancy, and allaying the vapour of conceit and factious opinions. For humility is the soul's grave, into which she enters, not to die, but to meditate and inter some of its troublesome appendages. There she sees the dust, and feels the dishonours of the body, and reads the register of all its sad adherencies; and then she lays by all her vain reflections, beating upon her crystal and pure mirror from the fancies of strength and beauty, and little decayed prettinesses of the body.

Holy Dying, III, vi, 2.

THE NORTH WIND

FOR SO have I known the boisterous North wind pass through the yielding air, which opened its bosom, and appeased its violence by entertaining it with easy compliance in all the regions of its receptions. But when the same breath of heaven hath been checked with the stiffness of a tower, or the united strength of a wood, it grew mighty and dwelt there, and made the highest branches stoop and make a smooth path for it on the top of all its glories.

AVOIDING DEATH

Ibid., III, vi, 6.

We are so softened and made effeminate with delicate thoughts, and meditations of ease, and brutish satisfactions, that if our death comes before we have

seized upon a great fortune, or enjoy the promises of the fortune-tellers, we esteem ourselves to be robbed of our goods, to be mocked and miserable. Hence it comes that men are impatient of the thoughts of death; hence come those arts of protraction and delaying the significations of old age; thinking to deceive the world, men cozen themselves, and by representing themselves youthful, they certainly continue their vanity, till Proserpina pull the peruke from their heads. We cannot deceive God and nature, for a coffin is a coffin, though it be covered with a pompous veil; and the minutes of our time strike on and are counted by Angels, till the period comes which must cause the passing-bell to give warning to all the neighbours that thou art dead, and they must be so; and nothing can excuse or retard this. And if our death could be put off a little longer, what advantage can it be in thy accounts of nature or felicity? They that three thousand years agone died unwillingly, and stopped death two days, or stayed it a week, what is their gain? where is that week? And poor-spirited men use arts of protraction and make their persons pitiable, but their condition contemptible, being like the poor sinners at Noah's flood: the waters drove them out of their lower rooms; then they crept up to the roof, having lasted half a day longer; and then they knew not how to get down; some crept upon the top branch of a tree, and some climbed up to a mountain, and stayed it may be three days longer. But all that while they endured a worse torment than death; they lived with amazement, and were distracted with the ruins of mankind, and the horror of an universal deluge.

Holy Dying, III, vii.